


Now It's So Clear to Me

by circ_bamboo



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Masquerade">Masquerade</a> world, Maria Hill decided she didn't want to be an alchemist. She joined the Army and then SHIELD instead. There she found more magic than she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now It's So Clear to Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluflamingo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/gifts).



> Written for the Avengersfest exchange, 2013.
> 
> Bluflamingo's prompt asked for, among other things, "magic (the good kind)," and . . . this story appeared. I hope you like it!
> 
> Title from [here](http://www.lyricsfreak.com/a/america/you+can+do+magic_20007269.html).

I.

Really, the best part of Maria Hill's initial briefing with SHIELD, when Director Fury had started to read her into at least the first level of secrets that SHIELD held, was when he'd said, "Okay, now the weird shit: superheroes, mutants, and magic, and yes, the last one is real."

It was awesome not because she'd always wished that there was magic in the world--ha--but because she could say, "Yeah, I know," and see his eye widen.

Agent Coulson, who was sitting next to him at the conference table, coughed politely.

"Yeah, yeah, you told me so, I know." Fury sighed. "Asshole's always right."

Maria tipped her head to one side. "Well, of course he is. He can See, can't he?" She'd seen the gold threading around his face easily; she couldn't see her own, obviously, but she knew it was there, the magical indications of someone who could See.

A truly frightening grin spread across Fury's face and he said to Coulson, "You're not the only one anymore. She can keep tabs on you." To Maria he said, "What can you do, other than See?"

"Uh," Maria said. "Not a lot. I can light fires and if I set up correctly, I can do ritual magic." Which wasn't much of an admission; Fury probably could do ritual magic if he tried, and he looked about as magical as a brick to her. "In case you’ve forgotten from my background check, my mother's older sister is Debra Fluharty," she offered.

Both men nodded as if they had known that her aunt was the head of the Guild of Alchemists. Fury, in particular, looked like the information didn’t impress him at all, and Coulson looked as blandly pleasant as ever.

"So we definitely aren't going to have to send you to 101," Fury said. "Good. There are only two of you in the whole organization who can See, but Coulson here literally can't do anything else."

"Can't even bend a spoon," Coulson said lightly. He didn't look too annoyed.

"There are five others who have some talent and training, but other than one alchemist working in R & D, no one who can do much more than a few parlor tricks. Seems that people who can actually do shit don't want to work for us."

"You don't pay well enough, sir," Maria said, keeping her face perfectly straight.

Fury laughed out loud, which was even more frightening than watching him grin, and he slapped his hand on the table. "Good. Coulson will finish your briefing, and then you can start doing work."

II.

Maria met four of the five other magic-users before the day ended, but the fifth one was out on an assignment, and he--Clint Barton--didn't return for a couple weeks. By then, she'd settled in a little bit; she knew where most of the places she was expected to be were, both in HQ and on the Helicarrier, and she'd almost gotten used to working in a catsuit.

(It wasn't actually a catsuit, but close enough.)

So when Fury told her to debrief a specialist in Conference Room B, she'd almost forgotten about the fifth magic-user, and it surprised her to walk in and See the threads of white and purple running over his hands and around his face. "Oh," she said, stopping dead and feeling extremely stupid and unprofessional.

Specialist Barton raised his eyebrows. "What? Also," he added, "who are you?"

"Agent Maria Hill," she said, "and I'm here to debrief you. Also, I can, uh, See." She gestured to his hands and face.

He frowned at her for a moment, but then his face cleared. "Oh, you mean like Coulson can," he said. "Okay, yeah, I can do some stuff. See a little farther, shoot a little more accurately. Not that I don't work on it," he said, a little defensively, "but, you know. It helps. What about you?"

"I can light things on fire," Maria said, and held a small blue flame in the palm of her hand briefly before extinguishing it.

"Oh, my God, if I could do that I'd be unstoppable," Barton said, eyes wide.

"Or you could carry a lighter," she said.

Barton stared at her and then chuckled. "Yeah, okay," he said, swinging his legs up onto the chair next to his. "Shall we start?"

III.

Maria stared at the young woman in the cell and watched the red lines of magic twist and swirl through her skin--not hovering over her skin like everyone else, but somehow embedded in it. "I've never seen anything like it," she said to Fury. "I don't think she can actually _do_ magic. I think she _is_ magic."

Fury nodded. "That's what Coulson said. You want to talk to her?"

"Yes," Maria said, almost before he'd finished asking.

Natasha Romanoff was quiet and subdued, but she answered Maria's questions easily enough. "No, I can't use magic," she said. "At least, not that I remember." There had been a month of treatment, to get rid of some nasty brainwashing triggers left in there by the Red Room, but supposedly her memories were intact. "I've been told that I look like I should be able to use magic, but I can't." She held out one hand and stared at it; Maria saw the lines briefly thicken, but nothing happened.

Maria hesitated, knowing she probably shouldn't say anything, but eventually said, "To me you look like--like you _are_ magic. Can you think of a reason why?"

Romanoff was silent for quite a long time, more than a minute, and when she spoke it was very quietly, so that Maria had to lean forward to hear. "The Red Room, they--I don't know what they did to me. I don't remember much before age ten or eleven. But I think--I think they were trying to figure out how to make magic-users out of regular people, and I didn't work out."

"I think you worked out just fine," Maria said, and only after the words were out of her mouth, did she realize how stupid it sounded. She almost winced, but Romanoff was smiling at her, a real smile, and Maria was helpless to do anything but smile back.

IV.

"May I join you?"

Maria looked up to see Natasha Romanoff, newly-minted Agent of SHIELD, holding a tray of food and indicating the empty table surrounding Maria herself. For a moment, as it always happened, she couldn't see Romanoff's delicate features under the twisting red lines, but then they subsided into the background a little. "Of course," Maria said.

"Thank you." Romanoff sat and ate a couple bites of her sandwich before saying, "I'm going on a mission with Specialist Barton next week. What can you tell me about his magic?"

"You should probably ask him," Maria said, but Romanoff raised one reddish eyebrow, and Maria capitulated immediately. "Well, like most of us who work for SHIELD, it's not much. He can see farther than standard humans--not See with a capital 's' like Agent Coulson and I can, but the regular kind. He's told me that his aim is better than it should be, as well, although he's always very clear that he would still be the World's Most Amazing Marksman even without the magic."

"And Agent Coulson? He can just See, correct?"

Maria nodded.

"What can you do?"

"I'm not going on the mission with you," Maria said. She looked down at her own tray and pushed her leftover fruit salad around with a fork.

"I'd still like to know." Romanoff's tone made Maria lift her head; she was smiling and it seemed real. Even though Maria knew that Romanoff was a consummate actress and spy, uniquely trained and suited for undercover missions of almost any type, she still found herself . . . susceptible. 

Maria straightened and looked around; they were almost alone in the cafeteria, and no one was paying them any attention. So she cupped her hand and lit a small flame, holding it out for Romanoff to see.

Romanoff's eyes grew wide and she reached out, stopping short of touching either Maria's hand or the flames. "Ohhhhh," she breathed.

"It's not that amazing," Maria said, squirming in her seat a little. "I can't throw fireballs or anything. I'm about as useful as a box of matches."

Romanoff's fingers brushed at the edge of Maria's sleeve, not even touching her skin. "I think it's beautiful," she said.

Maria's mouth dried out and she had to swallow twice before she could say, "Thank you."

V.

Budapest sucked.

Budapest mostly sucked because Maria wasn't there; she was sitting aboard the Helicarrier with eight screens of data feeds--video as well as numbers--surrounding her, and all three audio feeds (Barton's, Romanoff's, and Coulson's) in her earpiece. The op was blown thirty seconds in and it had dissolved into a firefight, a high-speed chase, and now a footrace, and there was nothing Maria could do.

Coulson was good; in fact, Coulson was a better handler than she was. He'd been one for much longer than she'd even been with SHIELD, but then again, he was almost twenty years older than she was, so that wasn't surprising. Still, though, it was difficult to trust Coulson when it just looked like a mess from her end.

"Left, left, _left_ , there's a truck blocking the alley on the right!"

But none of them could hear her; Barton had lost his earpiece already, although his lapel mic was still intact and she could hear him gulping in breaths. Coulson's earpiece was in his ear, but the battery had run out, and Maria had no idea what was wrong with Romanoff's earpiece but the datafeed said that hers was dead, too.

Fortunately, Romanoff headed left; Barton scaled a fire escape and jumped over the truck, meeting up with Romanoff couple blocks away. But that left them vulnerable to a helicopter, now that they were on a wider street, and Maria bit what was left of her fingernails as Romanoff rolled under a car to avoid a spray of bullets.

"Fuck!"

Maria jumped when she heard Barton swear; she swapped to a different video feed that gave her a partial view of him, and he had one hand clapped to his shoulder. _Shit._ She hoped he'd just been grazed, but even so, there was nothing she could do. She was _useless_.

She pounded a fist against the desk and Agent Sitwell, who was at the desk next to her, said, "Everything okay, Maria?"

"Yes. No. Not really. Everything's exploding and oh my _God_ Coulson just left the fucking safe house and I can't talk to any of them and they aren't telling me what's going on." She hit the button that would let her talk to Coulson if his fucking earpiece wasn't dead and said, "Agent Coulson, return to the safe house immediately," just to relieve a tiny amount of the tension running through her.

But now she had three people to keep track of, and goddamn Coulson for disobeying orders. Barton wasn't hurt enough to impair his movement, not yet. Romanoff had rolled out from under the car and was shooting back at the helicopter; she dropped the person who had been using the mounted gun, at least, and possibly one or two others. Maria took half a breath, and then froze again when a group of people in dark suits and masks stormed out from a nearby building and started shooting.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," she chanted as she tried to figure out an escape route. "Coulson, you're two blocks away. Get there now and put some bullets in these assholes."

She knew he couldn't hear her, but when he arrived and started shooting from behind a half-wall, she felt a tiny bit vindicated. Not that Romanoff and Barton weren't holding their own; they had managed to climb on top of a truck, lying flat on their stomachs and leaning over the side to shoot. Barton was shooting arrows basically as fast as he could since he'd run out of bullets, and, despite his arm, had managed to kill or incapacitate about five of the bad guys so far. Romanoff had kicked a couple who had tried to climb on the truck in the face, and they'd stayed kicked, and she'd shot four more. Coulson picked off the rest, and they started running again, the three of them.

There were a couple more near misses; Romanoff almost got crushed between a car and the side of a building, and Barton had to execute a somersault that probably didn't help his shoulder very much. But thirty of the longest minutes of Maria's life later, they made it to the extraction point and collapsed into the back of a Quinjet.

Maria herself collapsed back in her chair and then pinched the bridge of her nose. "God, I need a drink."

"Go get one," Sitwell said, patting her on the shoulder as he stood. "That was a clusterfuck."

"Yeah."

Maria went home; she thought about collapsing in one of the spare rooms at SHIELD HQ but decided it was worth the extra half hour to sleep in her own bed in her own apartment. It was almost dawn, but she ended up skipping the alcohol and downing a couple of sleeping pills instead. 

Twelve hours later, nine of which were spent blissfully unconscious, she was staring into her mug of coffee and trying to decide if she could drag herself into work for a couple hours at least when there was a knock on her door. She could count on one hand the number of people who knew her address, and the number of them who would be knocking on her door right at that moment was vanishingly small, so she grabbed her gun and went to look out the peephole.

It was, of all people, Natasha Romanoff; there was a faint bruise on one side of her face that Maria could see through the fisheye, but other than that she looked fine. Maria ejected the magazine on her gun and set both pieces on the table by the door and then opened it.

Romanoff--Natasha--stared at her for a long, electric moment, and then threw herself into Maria's arms, and wow, that was unexpected.

Well, no; no, it wasn't. Nor was it unexpected for Natasha's lips to find hers, although Maria didn't quite expect how much she wanted this, wanted Natasha.

They broke apart moments later, panting, and Maria could do nothing but stare. Natasha's irises glowed bright green in all the red: her hair, the lines of magic crawling through her skin, and the rims of her eyes. She'd been crying, although she was composed now, but Maria didn't ask why; she just rubbed a thumb down the line of Natasha's jaw and smiled.

Natasha smiled back and, in a perfectly ordinary tone of voice, asked, "Where's your bedroom?"

"You sure you want that?" Maria said. "Right now?

Natasha smiled again, and it was less vulnerable, more predatory. "Yes. Don't you?"

"Yes."

VI.

"I asked Coulson what you look like to him," Natasha said, tracing abstract designs with one fingertip on Maria's abdomen.

"Oh?" Maria said. She was half asleep and completely drunk on orgasms and sated skin-hunger, and it took a moment to scoop up enough brain cells to respond. Also, Coulson was a great coworker and a good friend, but she really, really didn't want to talk about him while she was naked in bed with an equally-naked Natasha wrapped around her.

"He says you have gold on your face, like he does, but your hands are threaded with silver."

"Oh," Maria said again, and sighed. "Yeah. It means I'm an alchemist, or I could be, if I wanted to. It's why I can call flames."

"You don't want to be an alchemist?"

"Nope," she said. "I ran off and joined the Army instead."

"Ah," Natasha said. "Like Coulson."

" _Not_ like Coulson," Maria said, chuckling. "No, he was Special Forces. I was just a regular old intelligence analyst." She kissed Natasha on the top of her head. "Also, can we stop talking about Coulson in bed?"

Natasha laughed, bright and open, and she cupped one hand around Maria's hip. "Yes." She lifted her head and pulled Maria down for a kiss that rapidly turned heated.

An hour later--she had apparently not been as sated as she thought--Maria was the one curled around Natasha, one head pillowed on her shoulder. Because of that, she could feel Natasha tense as if she wanted to speak, and then relax. It happened again, and Maria said, "What did you want to say?"

"Can you light the candle beside the bed?"

"You want light, or you want to see me do magic?" Maria asked lightly.

"Magic," Natasha said.

"Okay," Maria said. She pulled a little energy together into the palm of her hand--and then screamed and threw it towards the foot of the bed when it wasn't a small yellow flame but a giant orange _fireball_ she had in her hand. The sheets caught fire with a _whoosh_ , and Maria shoved Natasha off the bed, kneeling up on the covers and grabbing a pillow.

She heard Natasha hit the floor as she tried to smother the flames, but they'd spread too quickly for just a pillow to work. Natasha returned a moment later with the comforter that had been draped over a chair; Maria grabbed one end of it and between the two of them they managed to cover the fire.

"Oh, my God," Maria said, as she picked up one end of the comforter to see if the flames had gone out. They had, although the bed was probably burnt beyond repair; the sheets, comforter, and mattress cover were all definitely ruined. "Are you okay?" she asked Natasha.

"I'm fine," Natasha said. "I don't think I even got burned. Your hands, though--are you okay?"

Maria looked down at her hands, which were bright red and starting to blister. "Ouch. Um, no."

"Okay," Natasha said, picking up her underwear off the floor and stepping into it. "Let's get you to SHIELD."

One of the five other magic-workers at SHIELD was, in fact, a healer; it only took Dr. Hilliker the work of a few seconds to fix Maria's hands. "What happened?" she asked. "Cooking accident?"

"No," Maria said, and frowned, trying to reconstruct what happened. "I was trying to light a candle--you know--" Maria wiggled her fingers, and Dr. Hilliker nodded. "--and I thought I had called a tiny flame but in fact it was a giant fireball."

Dr. Hilliker nodded again. "Has that ever happened before?"

"No," Maria said. "In fact, to my knowledge, I can't even call that much flame if I try."

"Huh," Dr. Hilliker said. "Anything different about this time? Were you touching something with pyrovine in it, were you involved with something like a ritual?"

"No," Maria said, and then blushed, because sex was, in fact, a ritual. "I mean . . ."

"Sex," Dr. Hilliker prompted.

"Yeah." Maria felt her face grow even hotter. "But that can't be it. I've lit candles after sex before, and there were no fireballs."

"Different location?"

"No. My own bed."

"Different partner?"

"Yes."

"Does Agent Romanoff have any talents? Was she wearing any jewelry?"

Maria thought about being embarrassed that the doctor knew she'd been having sex with Natasha but realized she really wasn't. "No, no jewelry. And Agent Romanoff can't do any magic but--" But she _was_ magic, at least in a way, and Maria may have just figured out how. "Can you forget we ever had this conversation?" she asked.

"I'm not going to forget the part about you being sexually active now, and you're overdue for a pelvic exam, but other than that, yes, I can forget the rest," Dr. Hilliker said.

"Good."

VII.

"So you just want me to shoot, and then I'll try the same shot, but Natasha will be touching me somewhere?" Clint said.

"Yes, that's it exactly," Maria said, and Natasha nodded.

"And something might change, but you won't tell me what," he said.

"Yes," Natasha said.

"Because science, right?"

"Yep," Maria said.

"Well, this sounds like fun," Clint said, and hopped off the corner of the table he'd been sitting on, picking up his bow and a fistful of arrows.

The first shot went straight into the bullseye, and Maria sighed. "What's the very edge of your range with that thing?" she asked.

"About twice that distance," Clint said, not quite managing to suppress his smug look.

Maria sighed and pressed a button to change the target distance. Natasha gave her a look that rather clearly said, _well, you could have asked,_ and Maria had to admit she was right. "How's that?" she asked.

Clint squinted into the distance and said, "I can probably still make it."

"Humor me."

He shrugged, and then aimed and shot, hitting--Maria saw through the monitor--the third ring, almost on the edge of the second one.

"Natasha, if you would."

Natasha took a step forward and touched two fingers to the back of Clint's neck, just below his hairline.

"Your fingers are cold," Clint said, squirming, but Natasha clipped him on the shoulder with her other hand, and he stilled. Taking a deep breath, he lined up and froze dead. "Whoa. I can see every single detail on the target like it's six inches from my nose."

"Can you make the shot?" Maria asked, fighting to keep her tone neutral.

"Hill, if I miss this goddamn shot, I might as well hang up my bowstrings permanently," he said, and he released the arrow almost absently, as if it were the easiest thing ever.

It slammed straight into the bullseye, burying itself more than an inch deep in the target.

"So Natasha's an amplifier?" Clint asked, breaking the silence that followed.

"I think it's more accurate to say 'battery,' but apparently, yes," Natasha said.

"Cool." Clint rubbed his hands together. "So how do we use this?"

Natasha's lips curved into a smile; so did Maria's. "Let's figure it out," she said.

VIII.

"Maria, have you ever met Tony Stark?" Coulson's voice sounded strangled, even through the spotty cell phone connection.

"Nope," Maria said. "I've seen him on TV about a million times, though."

"I think I need your aunt's phone number."

"Oh," she said. He had to mean the one who was the head of the Guild of Alchemists. "Oh. So he's--"

"Silver, head to toe. I can barely look at him."

"Huh," Maria said. "Well, that explains a lot. You don't think he knows?"

"No," Coulson said. "I dropped in a couple of code phrases and he didn't react at all. Besides, wouldn't _you_ know?"

"Maybe not," she said, "but that's not important. Are you going to tell him?"

Coulson's sigh whistled through the tiny phone speaker. "Not yet," he said. "I don't think he needs to know. He's doing fine--well, as well as can be expected after what happened in Afghanistan."

"Okay," Maria said. "You want me to call up Aunt Debra anyway?"

"How about we keep that in our pocket for now. In other news, anything new on Banner?"

"Intel says he's been spotted in Rocinha but he appears to be stable, so we're not moving in yet." 

"Ah. I have to go; Stark is leaving the benefit in a hurry. Thanks, Maria."

"You're welcome."

IX.

"Fury's sending me undercover at Stark Industries," Natasha said. "In California."

"California's nice," Maria said. "Oh, but wait--don't touch Stark."

"Why not?" Natasha asked, one eyebrow raised. "Think he'll be able to steal me from you?"

Maria tackled Natasha and pinned her on her back, but only because Natasha let her, she knew. "Never," she said. "He's not your type, and anyway, you're mine." She leaned down and kissed Natasha as possessively as she could. "But I meant you shouldn't touch him because he's an alchemist and he doesn't know it, and you might make him explode something."

"Ah, yes, I did know that. Coulson mentioned it, but thanks for reminding me." Natasha chuckled. "It could be funny, though."

"Well, then only touch him if you can get a video of him exploding something with maximum hilarity."

"I think I can manage that."

X.

"Dear fuck that was a long week," Nick Fury said. "Fucking aliens who think they’re gods. Fucking Hulk. Fucking Abomination. Fucking Tony fucking Stark."

"Agreed," Maria said. "More vodka?"

"You stole that from Natasha, right?"

"Yes."

"Gimme."

XI.

All Maria could think, as the Mojave Desert SHIELD installation fell around her in literal chunks, was how much she wished Natasha was there so she could throw fucking _fireballs_.

XII.

It was sheer luck that had Dr. Hilliker on the Helicarrier in time to save Coulson from the stab wound, but as happy as that made Maria, she couldn't relax until Natasha was back, preferably in her arms.

In the meantime, though, while Natasha was busy eating falafel with the rest of the Avengers, there were things to do. Vast parts of the Helicarrier were a mess, some outright destroyed, and someone needed to oversee the survey and cleanup. Fury had too many things to do to concentrate on just one, so Maria started sending off uninjured people in parties of two, to give her better information on what exactly had happened in particular areas.

Twenty-four hours passed like that. Maria got a couple hours of sleep at a time, when she thought she could, and worked her ass off the rest of the day. Natasha sent a text that she was crashing in an undisturbed part of Stark Tower, at Stark's invitation, with Clint, and she'd be back as soon as she could.

At some point towards the end of the second day, Fury told her that the WSC wanted to debrief her, and she rolled her eyes. "I don't think I have time for that, Director."

"You think I did? Do it anyway."

When she came out of the debrief, Natasha and Clint were waiting for her. Maria smiled without even trying to and started to raise her hands, but Clint, who looked inexplicably miserable, said, "Wait. Before you do your Romeo-and-Juliet shtick, can you tell me where--where they took Coulson?"

Maria frowned. "He's still in Medical, I think. He was asleep last I saw him, but he might be awake now."

Clint stared at her like she'd grown a second head, and Maria almost looked at her shoulders but stopped herself. Natasha was looking a little confused, too, and Maria said, "He's alive. He's fine. Well, he's not fine, but he's doing well enough for someone who was clinically dead for about three minutes."

"You're fucking shitting me," Clint said, and spun on his heel and _ran_.

"To be fair," Maria said to the place where Clint had been, "they were pretty sure he was just going to die again for the next couple hours, so I can understand why Fury didn't bother rescinding his statement until they knew he was going to pull through. But I was sure you'd been told."

Natasha shook her head. "No. We hadn't."

"I'm so sorry. If I'd have known that, I would have called immediately and told you."

Natasha nodded. "I know." Her voice cracked as she said, "He's really okay?"

"Yeah," Maria said. "Tired, sore, and in need of some follow-ups with Hilliker, but he'll live."

"Oh, thank God," Natasha said, and pitched herself into Maria's arms.

She held Natasha close for a long moment, and then hit her comm unit to say, "Director Fury, I'm taking a break for the next few hours."

"Good call, Hill. Get some sleep."

"I will." She pulled the earpiece out, turned it off, and shoved it in her pocket. "Eventually. Come on."

But Natasha stopped short, and said, "No. Not here. I checked, and your apartment building was mostly unharmed. Can we go there?"

Maria nodded.

It was about two hours before they managed to make it back to Maria's place; the flight back to New York had been relatively short but both public transit and street traffic were disrupted. Eventually they made it to Maria's neighborhood, and ended up walking the last few blocks.

The lock to the front door of her building was a little shaky, but it let Maria in with only a minimum of jiggling. The building was oddly silent other than the hum of electricity; Maria thought probably most of the residents were gone. But Mr. Hutchinson was still watching CNN in his living room at top volume; Maria could hear them talking about Iron Man and Captain America and the Hulk, and she shook her head.

Maria's own door was fine, and her apartment was largely undamaged, other than some items on shelves having fallen. But the books and plates were replaceable, and her bedroom was fine.

They fell on the bed, intertwining immediately; Maria wanted as much skin contact as she could have and Natasha seemed to feel the same way. They made love slowly, intently, hands and mouths and sweat and friction and the need to know _everything_ : _you're here, you're safe, you're mine._

Afterwards, still wrapped together, Maria said, "I almost had Fury call you back, to be a battery for Hilliker, but it wasn't necessary."

"I was a little busy kicking Clint in the head," Natasha said, "but I would have done it."

"I know," Maria said. She buried her face in Natasha's chest and took a long, shuddering breath.

"Maria, I--"

"What was that?" Maria said. She was aware that she'd interrupted Natasha, but she'd heard . . . something. Some sort of dull boom, that didn't sound like the normal kind of fireworks or cars backfiring or even gunshots.

"I don't know," Natasha said curtly, and rolled out of bed into a defensive stance immediately. Maria pulled on her pajamas and a pair of boots, and turned to see Natasha doing the same.

They each had a single gun; Maria left most of her arsenal on the Helicarrier, but she had a couple of throwing knives and Natasha had a garrote, five knives, and her Widow's Bites on her. "Ready?" Maria said, and Natasha nodded.

Maria cracked the door open and looked out. There was nothing in her hallway, either direction, although she could faintly hear screams in the distance, so she opened the door and padded out. Natasha followed her, equally quietly. The screams grew louder, or at least more distinct, and Maria jerked her head in the direction of the window at the end of the hallway.

The building across the street, another set of apartments, was on _fire_ , its bottom floor looking like Swiss cheese, flames shooting out through the holes. People were pouring out into the street, both from the flaming building and from the nearby buildings. 

"Fuck," Maria spat out. She turned around and ran for the stairway at the other end of the hallway. Fumbling for her cell phone, she tapped in 911, but the call didn't go through. It wasn't surprising; the phone networks were compromised after the destruction, and the first responders were probably still busy responding or sleeping it off. Her next call was to SHIELD: "Explosion, across the street from my residence, building might fall, unknown origin, send help," she barked out and then stuffed the phone back into her pocket.

She and Natasha skidded out the front door and then came to a full stop in the street. Honestly, she had no idea what she could or should be doing right now. She wasn't Iron Man, with a suit impervious to flames, and she wasn't the Human Torch, who could go in there even without a suit. Sirens said that some first responders were on their way there, and SHIELD should be pretty close behind them. 

But before she could even think anything else, Natasha was speaking. "Maria," she said. "You can call fire, right?"

"I think that's literally the opposite of what we need right now," Maria said, tapping the fingers of one hand on the hilt of one of her knives.

"Yes, exactly," Natasha said. "You can put flames out, right?"

Maria turned to stare at her. "I can put a _candle_ flame out." Most of the time she just used her fingers or breath, like everyone else.

"But you have a battery."

"I can't--" Her mouth went dry. "I think it would kill both of us if I tried to put the whole building out."

"Then don't do that. Just put out the flames where they're needed."

Maria didn't know anything about the anatomy of a fire, but it wasn't difficult to figure that if she kept the flames away from the hallway and doors, more people would be able to get out. She took a deep breath and said, "Okay. Let's try it."

Natasha smiled and held out her hand.

XIII.

Later, Maria wouldn't remember exactly what she did, how she even managed to corral the fire, exactly how many feet of hallway she managed to keep flame-free. She would remember the feel of Natasha's hand in hers, growing sweat-slippery almost immediately, as they navigated their way through the crowd to the front door of the building. She would remember the smell of burning wood and plaster and fabric, the terrified screams of people trapped in their own apartments, the unyielding heat of the fire, the thick smoke that obscured almost everything. She would remember when the firefighters got there and said words like _backdraft_ and _flashover_ , and she would remember stopping those things, whatever they were.

She would remember people rushing by her and the roar of the fire in her ears, but she wouldn't remember passing out.

Maria woke up in SHIELD medical, hooked up to an IV, monitors all over the place, and Natasha in a chair by her bed, holding onto her hand carefully.

"I'm not dead?" she said--or, well, croaked; she sounded like she'd been eating sandpaper.

"You'd better not be," Natasha said. "I carried you out of there."

Dr. Hilliker came in, and Maria sat grimly through her fussing. "Smoke inhalation, dehydration, burns, oxygen deprivation, glycogen depletion--I couldn't fix it all, so you're going to be uncomfortable for a few days, but I'm not even sure how you're alive."

Maria shrugged. She was well aware that what she'd done was stupid, but Natasha had believed she could do it, so she had. "Luck and talent, I guess."

Hilliker shook her head. "Don't do it again. Or if you are determined, get the proper training."

"I will," Maria said, and even meant it, too. "Are you okay?" she asked Natasha once Hilliker had gotten all the readings she wanted and left. "I mean, you were in there too, and I was using your energy, I think, so--"

"I'm fine," Natasha said. "Not even singed around the edges." She held up her hands and turned them over, and then flicked her hair over her shoulder and back. "I slept for a few hours, and everything feels normal."

Maria nodded.

"How are you feeling?"

"Sore and headachy," Maria said, and then wiggled her fingers and toes. "Other than that, no injuries. Just a little hungover, I guess."

"Good. But--" Natasha stopped, swallowed, and then, almost too fast for Maria to track, swung herself up on the bed and straddled Maria's hips carefully, resting almost none of her weight on Maria. "Marry me?"

"What?" Maria said, her brain going a little staticky with surprise. "I mean, yes, of course, but what?"

"I love you," Natasha said, which she rarely did; Maria never doubted that she felt it, but the words were something different. "And you love me."

She paused, and Maria nodded, trying to put how obvious she felt the sentiment was into her face.

"And I want to marry you."

"Well, that's good," Maria said, feeling giddy and wondering if there was morphine in her IV, "because I want to marry _you_."

"Good," Natasha said, and leaned down to kiss Maria gently.

After she pulled back, sitting up carefully, Natasha murmured, just loud enough to be heard over the monitors, "Can Clint be the best man?"

"Sure," Maria said, "although I guess this means Coulson gets to be the maid of honor."

"I was thinking Director Fury," Natasha said, and Maria chuckled.

"Coulson would look better in a dress," she said.

"That's true," Natasha said, and laughed as well.

"So it's going to be that easy?" Maria asked.

"No," Natasha said, and slid to lie next to Maria, being careful not to disturb any of the tubes or wires. "We are who we are, and that's not going to change. But I think we can do it."

"Yeah," Maria said, her heart full to bursting. She raised one hand up to trace the red lines along Natasha's arm. "So do I."

**Author's Note:**

> Notes on world-building: Vibranium (air), adamantium (earth), pyrovine (fire), and aegeium (water) are the four magical elements.
> 
> What Maria sees when she sees a person's magic I borrowed, sort of, from Tamora Pierce's depiction of what Numair Salmalin sees in _Wild Magic_ , although my memory isn't exact and my copy of the book is in a box somewhere. I remixed what I remember, I guess, into Maria. It's not totally original to either of us, I suspect, but that's what I was thinking of.


End file.
